Stefan van Aalst

Ing. Stefan van Aalst, MSc

Chief Technology Officer, anDREa BV

In 2014, together with Arnoud van der Maas, CSIO of Radboudumc, Stefan laid the foundation of the concept Digital Research Environment (DRE). A solution for the group of researchers best served by trusted, tool and data agnostic environments in which easy collaboration, including with externals, is possible. In 2015 Stefan was responsible for the European Tender and during this time, the job turned into a passion: helping the research ecosystem to deal with that particular group of researchers. In 2019 Stefan became CTO of anDREa consortium, a collaboration of three UMCs, that resulted in a spin out in 2021. Servicing now every month over 1,600 active researchers, working from 26+ countries in studies of 10 research institutes. Stefan works actively on his dream to extend anDREa’s services to other European Research Institutions. Trust, unburden, and empowerment are key, and with respect to trust, Stefan is personally committed to contributing to bodies that objectively will certify solutions and companies that want to operate in the research ecosystem and to bodies committed to standardisation agreements for Research Institutions. Data, large or small, will only be accessible if there is trust. Trust is objectified and made measurable and is useful for minimal CISOs, DPOs, Legal, and not in the least the interest groups.